


100 Days (Alone)

by Zaffie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Better Than Usual, Chilling With Their Rover, Driving Around, Gen, I Feel Like I Tagged Really Well Today, In A Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland, It's Like A Five-Year Road Trip, Just Clarke and Madi Hanging Out, Just Some Cute Bonding, Of Eternal Cold And Darkness, Straight After Praimfaya, This Is Actually Mostly Fluffy, Yeah Go Me, but not really, very little angst, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 06:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11178831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: Everyone she knows or loves is somewhere that Clarke can't follow. She's the only person on the planet's surface. Hell, for all she knows, she's the sole survivor of the apocalypse. She's alone in the world.And then she finds Madi.





	100 Days (Alone)

**Author's Note:**

> If you want any translations for Trigedasleng, go find them at that dictionary site that I don't have the link to right now. Because that site is boss. Also, if anyone is a nerd and wants to correct my fictional language mistakes, please do. I'm sure I made some, and I'd love to fix them up. You go, fictional language nerds. <3

_29 days_

     Madi says, “Say me your story again.”

     They’re sitting in front of their campfire in Polis on their twelfth day of moving rubble. Clarke’s been staring down at her filthy hands, wrapped around a mug of heated water. There’s nothing more substantial to put in the water – not here, anyway – but the warmth still feels good, on her hands and sliding down her throat.

     “Which story?” she asks Madi, looking up. The little girl’s face is streaked with grime and dust. Her hair is in long, fraying, grubby braids. She won’t let Clarke touch them.

     “You know. One with rocket ship.” Her English isn’t bad, although she speaks with an accent. And she stumbles over the new words – the words Clarke has been teaching her.

     “You’ve heard that story before,” Clarke says.

     “ _Sha_ , but it is my best one.”

     “How do you know? You haven’t heard any of the other stories.”

     Madi frowns, thinking about it. “ _Chit-”_

“English,” Clarke says. “You should practise.”

     “What,” Madi says, stressing the word, “other stories?”

     “Well, you’ll know if I tell you one.”

     Madi considers it. Clarke watches the girl as she tucks her knees up to her chest, kicking a shower of small rocks and dust into the fire. It splutters.

     “All right,” Madi says eventually. “Say me a new story.”

    

_37 days_

     It’s been five weeks, two days since Praimfaya, which Clarke keeps a running tally of in her head, even though in the grand scheme of things it’s practically nothing. She counts days now – remembers them – marks events by them. She’d found Madi twenty-six days ago. Praimfaya had been eleven days before that. Eleven days that Madi had been on her own, in Polis, recovering from the radiation sickness just like Clarke.

     The girl had watched her mother die, and it must have been a nightmare. Clarke can’t imagine. Doesn’t want to imagine.

     She’d come to Polis after she’d recovered, drawn by the need to see the bunker; to confirm that her people lived. And also a vague, morbid idea that she might see the bodies outside. That she might know who to mourn. Who they’d chosen.

     Bellamy is safe in space, that’s what she keeps telling herself. Bellamy and Raven both – two of the people Clarke holds most dear. And they made it, they definitely made it. There’s no other way it could have gone.

     Madi had been hiding behind the giant, crumpled buildings in the city. She’d hidden from Clarke too, at first. It had taken Clarke six days to draw her out. After that, Madi had stuck to her like a limpet. Followed her around the city, helped her find the ruins of the buildings above the bunker. Had lifted and moved chunks of concrete and stone and wood, and sweated and bled alongside Clarke.

     She’s a _natblida._ About six years old, Clarke thinks, although it’s hard to be sure. Madi either doesn’t know or she won’t say. Still, she’s missing two teeth – her bottom front ones – and she is short, with round cheeks and big eyes.

    

     “Say me your names,” Madi demands, huddled under her blanket and staring up at Clarke.

     “The names?” Clarke checks.

     Madi nods. “ _Sha._ Say me.”

     “Bellamy,” Clarke says. “Raven.” She waits, a pause after each name for Madi to repeat it, her accent twisting the vowels a little, mangling the words, but trying. Learning. “Monty. Harper. Murphy.”

     “ _Foto,_ ” Madi says instantly. “No good.”

     Clarke laughs. She’s been telling more stories about Murphy today, the good and the bad. “He was all right. Then Emori. And Echo.”

     “Grounders,” Madi says with relish.

     “That’s right. Like you.” Clarke taps the little girl on the nose, wipes the hair from the girl’s face.

     “Say me more names.”

     “I can’t say all of them.”

     “Till I sleep,” Madi says.

     Clarke nods, pulling the blanket up higher, up to Madi’s chin. She starts in a low voice. “Abby.”

 

_41 days_

     They’re not going to be able to dig the bunker out. That’s what Clarke realises, after they’ve been trying for twenty-four days. There’s just too much. It’s too heavy. They’re too small, the both of them. Clarke knows this, and has known it since day two or three, but she’s kept trying anyway. Maybe they’ll find a tunnel, or something.

     She gives up. “Come on,” she says to Madi. “We’re going.”

     Madi turns her face up to Clarke, black with soot and dust and ash. It’s on her skin, in her hair, even caked into her eyelashes. “Going where?” she asks.

     “Away from here. We’ll take the rover. Find some clean water, and some proper food.” They’ve been taking all their water from the fountains around the city, boiling it before they drink it. Food has been stale, occasionally mouldy bread and potatoes – or, well, Clarke thinks they’re potatoes. They’re tubers of some sort, anyway, and she’d found them in the food stores with the bread.

     Still, Polis is pretty much picked clean by now. And Clarke is sick of the constant hollow gnawing in her belly. She’s sick, too, of the disgusting taste that is always in her mouth and the dirt that is always in her body.

     “Where?” Madi asks again, insistently.

     “I don’t know,” Clarke says.

     That’s the trouble, really. At least she’d known where in Polis she could find the bare minimum to survive. There were buildings that weren’t completely demolished; usually the small, low-lying ones. There was flint, and kindling, and sometimes a roof over their heads. The black rain still burnt their skin, but it healed quickly.

     Madi thought they couldn’t die. She’d said so, to Clarke, a few times. That they would live forever. Nothing could hurt them.

     For the moment, at least, that’s true. There are no animals left – or, none that Clarke has found, anyway. No humans, either, unless there are more _natblidas_ out there somewhere. Hiding like Madi had been.

     It’s a new feeling, for once, to have nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to worry about except where to find the next meal, the next source of water. No one’s welfare to think about, either, except for Madi’s and Clarke’s own.

     They pack up into the rover and set out that evening.

 

_45 days_

     “ _Woda! Ai op woda!_ ”

     Clarke looks up and sees Madi running back towards her, little feet pounding on the dirt. It’s been a struggle, scavenging warm clothes for the girl. She’s small; undernourished, Clarke knows, although she tries to change it.

     “ _Weron?”_ Clarke asks, getting onto her knees on the hard packed ground. She’s been working on stitching together a pair of trousers small enough for Madi to wear. It’s harder work than she’d realised. Right now, Madi is wearing mismatched blankets wrapped around each leg, lashed in place with string. They’ve been putting layers over layers, trying to keep warm. Both of them look ridiculous, and the dirt and muck they’re caked in doesn’t help.

     “ _Mafta ai op!”_ Madi cries, and she starts running, pauses, turns to check that Clarke is following.

     Clarke levers herself to her feet and goes after the girl.

     There is water, but it’s frozen. Or, mostly frozen. The part Madi’s excited about is a jagged hole at the banks of the stream where the ice has shattered, and there’s real water underneath.

     “We can’t exactly wash in that,” Clarke says doubtfully.

     “Wash?”

     “Um. _Wada klin,_ ” Clarke says, and she thinks that’s right.

     Madi wrinkles her nose. “No,” she says, decidedly.

     “Okay then,” Clarke says. “No washing. Let’s fill up all the bottles, Madi, okay? And we’ll mark this spot on the map. When it gets warmer one day, we can come back.”

     The map is a work in progress, but Clarke’s been drawing her own in one of the books she’d taken from the bunker. She pencils in landmarks, distances, places they’ll need to remember. What direction they’d take to go back to Polis, if they ever wanted to. How far it is between water sources. She can measure the miles they’ve travelled using the rover, figure out the direction with the sun, weak and watery though it is.

     They never see a moon anymore. No stars, either. Clarke spends a lot of time at night gazing up into space. Wishing she could see as far as the Ring.

     She can’t.

 

_53 days_

     It’s cold, always cold. They take blankets whenever they find them and pack them into a little nest in the back of the rover. There’s room for the two of them to sleep, back there. Madi had pressed up against the wall at first, as far away from Clarke as possible. Still, she’s small, and she gets cold easily. She gets more used to Clarke, as well. Over time she inches closer, until she’s tucked herself against Clarke’s side.

     That’s where she is now, a warm, heaving ball, covered in blankets and furs and everything else they’ve managed to find. Her hair smells of mud. Clarke puts her head down on the pillow, an arm across Madi’s body. She watches the child breathe.

     Neither one of them had been alone for long, and Clarke is grateful for that. Glad that she’s found this half-wild, filthy, fearful little girl. Madi is always reluctant to take anything Clarke offers; food, warmth, company. Still, Clarke thinks they’re both lucky. Lucky that they’re together.

     She wakes with a jump. It’s pitch-black inside the rover. She’s been meaning to go back to Arkadia, see if there are any lights she can salvage. The rover’s headlights still work, but Clarke switches them  off at night. She’s scared of running down the battery.

     There’s a rumbling sound. Low, loud, far beneath them. The rover is shaking. An earthquake, Clarke realises. She’s suddenly glad that there are no trees around them. No trees anywhere for miles. No buildings, either. Nothing that could fall on the rover.

     The rumbling gets louder and Madi jerks in her sleep, and then she rolls onto her back and opens her eyes and cries, “ _Nomon!”_

     “Madi,” Clarke says. She touches the girl’s face and Madi bats her hand away, rolls over into the clear space.

     “Clarke,” she says dully.

     “I’m sorry,” Clarke says. She’s sorry she’s not Madi’s mother. She’s sorry Madi will never see her mother again. She’s sorry she’s the only one here to look after this child – Clarke, acting as a parent? If someone had asked her this before, she would have said it was ridiculous. Ludicrous. She knows nothing about children.

     Madi says something, soft and fast. Clarke hears the word _laud,_ realises what she’s asking.

     “The sound? It’s an earthquake.”

     “Earth-quake?”

     “It can’t hurt us.”

    

     Madi mostly speaks Trigedasleng. Especially when she’s tired; in the nights, or early in the mornings. Clarke has trouble translating everything. There are words in Trigedasleng she doesn’t know, even more words in English that Madi doesn’t understand.

     They’re stuck on a simple one. _The._ Clarke doesn’t know a translation; can’t figure out how to explain the word. Madi doesn’t know how to use it.

     “What is the?”

     “You say it before things.” Clarke points outside the rover. “The ground.”

     “Why is ground the?”

     “Because it’s _the_ ground.”

     Madi points at Clarke. “The Clarke.”

     “No, that’s not – I’m not _the_ , I’m just Clarke.”

     “ _Wan daun_ _tich_.”

     “Teach,” Clarke says, stressing the pronunciation. “Teaching.”

     “No-oo,” Madi whines, dragging the word out long. “No more.”

     “Tell me what we’re sitting in,” Clarke says.

     “Rover.” Madi pauses, thinks, sighs. “Rover _the._ ”

     “Okay,” Clarke says. “Close enough.”

    

 

_70 days_

     The rover doesn’t break down, like Clarke worried it would. It just keeps going faithfully, trundling on and on, over ruined, dusty ground and past dead, shattered trees. Nothing alive, except Clarke and Madi.

     She’s gotten pretty attached to the rover by now, actually. It’s become a home to them, always with them, wherever they stop. Plus, Clarke’s figured out how to rig up a stone on the pedal which keeps the rover going at low speed, slow enough for them to walk alongside it. Like it’s a pet, or something.

     Madi loves walking beside the rover, but she loves riding on top of it more. Clarke does it with her at first, letting the rover drive itself. After all, it’s not as if there’s anything it could bump into. There’s no reason to need the brakes or the steering. So the two of them lie up there, on the top of the vehicle, watching the land roll past.

     They stop when they see anything interesting. The ruins of a house or the burnt-out shell of a cottage, squatting in their path. Clarke will search for items they can use; anything she thinks they might need with them. Madi will run around hunting for plants, for animals, for children.

     Clarke tells her that they’re not likely to find more children. Madi was the exception, not the rule. Most parents wouldn’t hide their _natblida_ from the Coalition.

     “I think it’s a farm,” Madi says, when they spot the new house. Less of a house, really, and more of a shack in the forest. Or, what used to be the forest. “Food, Clarke.”

     “There might be,” Clarke says, unwilling to commit. “Go slow.”

     “Why? There’s nothing bad inside.” Madi jumps down from the back of the rover before it’s stopped moving, and runs towards the farm, giggling.

     Clarke rolls her eyes, parks the vehicle, and follows more slowly. Sedately. There’s so much red dust on the ground that it gets everywhere. Inside her shoes, her clothes, her hair. When the wind blows it whips the dust up and sends it into their eyes and mouths. Clarke had torn scraps from clothing and blankets that they’d found and made bandannas for herself and Madi. They wear them around their necks, ready to pull up over mouths and noses at a moment’s notice. She’s still working on something to protect their eyes. They need to be able to see.

     The smell is what alerts Clarke. She gets close and smells it and she thinks, that’s wrong. It’s been ten weeks since Praimfaya. The bodies are all too old to smell.

     “Madi!” Suddenly Clarke is scared in a way that she hasn’t been for months. “Madi!”

     A grubby little face appears around a doorway. Madi says, “What?” in a muffled voice, her cheeks swollen with something she’s found and shoved into her mouth.

     “Come here,” Clarke says, holding out a hand to the girl, calming her racing heart. She puts her hand on Madi’s shoulder when the girl comes close, keeps her nearby. “What are you eating?”

     “Candies. I found them and they’re mine,” Madi says, like she thinks Clarke’s going to snatch them right out of her mouth.

     “Go back to the rover.”

     “ _Chit?_ Why?”

     “Just do it, Madi, please.” Clarke doesn’t want Madi to see it – whatever _it_ is.

     There’s a moment’s hesitation and then the girl turns and runs away from the house. Clarke watches her progress, bare-footed over the red ground, until she reaches the rover and clambers inside. Only when she’s sure the girl is safe does Clarke move further into the house.

     She finds the body slumped in a corner, beside a half-broken wall, mostly covered by old blankets. The child looks very small in death. It must have been young. Clarke doesn’t know how it found enough food and water to survive this long. She doesn’t spend long looking. Just long enough to confirm what she already knows. She’d missed one.

     God, she’d missed one. What if she’d left Polis sooner? Gone searching for survivors on the first day? She could have saved this child the way she’d saved Madi.

     Clarke leaves the forlorn little building and gets back into the rover. She drives.

     After a while, Madi climbs from the back over into the passenger seat. “What was it?” she asks Clarke.

     “A _natblida._ ”

     “Is it _stedaun?_ ”

     “Dead,” Clarke says. “Yes.”

     Madi goes quiet for a little while after that.

 

_86 days_

     “Clarke!”

     Her head whips around when she hears the shout. They’d parked the rover behind a little outcropping of rock, the only landmark on a bare, windswept plain of red dust. Madi had gone running off to ‘explore’ their new campsite, and Clarke had been watching. She _had_. But she’d glanced down at the hole she was digging, just for a moment, and now the girl is screaming her name.

     Clarke calls, “Madi? Where are you?” She turns a full three-sixty, doesn’t see Madi anywhere.

     “Clarke!” The shout comes from above her.

     Clarke looks up and finds Madi balanced on the rocks above the rover. “What are you doing up there? Why are you yelling?” Old habits and caution die hard.

     “Look, Clarke!” Madi’s got one hand tightly clenched in a fist, presses the other against the rock to slow her descent as she scrambles down. When her feet hit the ground she runs straight to Clarke. “It’s my tooth! You see? My tooth!” She beams up at Clarke and unfolds her little hand and there’s a tooth sitting on her palm. Small, white.

     “You finally lost that one, huh?” Clarke says. “Open up.” She bends down to look into Madi’s wide-open mouth, grins as she sees the new gap at the front. It’s still bloody. “Now you’ve only got one front tooth.”

     “ _Sha,_ ” Madi says, and she reaches up to wobble the remaining tooth. “It comes out soon. Not long.”

     The two bottom teeth are starting to grow in as well, uneven and too large in Madi’s small face. Seventy-five days since Clarke had found the girl. Almost eleven weeks. Two-and-a-half months. Twenty percent of a year.

     “You wanna keep it?” Clarke asks, gesturing at the tooth.

     “No. I’m going to plant it.”

     “Plant it?”

     “ _Sha._ ”

     “I don’t think it will grow, you know,” Clarke says.

     Madi shrugs. “Plant it.”

     They’ve been talking a lot about planting, lately. About going to Arkadia, and to the bunker where Clarke had ridden out her radiation sickness. Searching for food, seeds, anything that they can plant in the dead soil.

     “You want to plant it right here?” Clarke asks.

     “In hole.”

     “ _The_ hole.”

     Madi huffs, impatient, and holds her tooth out over the hole Clarke’s been digging. “Here,” she says.

     “This hole is for water, Madi. We can’t plant your tooth in it.”

     “Oh.”

     “Yeah. Wanna dig your own hole?”

     “No spade,” Madi says, pointing at the one Clarke is using. It’s actually just an old, flat piece of metal that she’d found, hammered into the split end of a piece of wood. Still, it works.

     “There’s firewood in the back of the rover,” Clarke says. “You can dig with that.”

     It’s  weird, having to collect wood wherever they find it, in case they don’t come across more. Clarke is startled by how many of the trees had been destroyed by Praimfaya. She’d been so busy thinking about people, she’d forgotten to think about everything else that would die. Insects. She hasn’t seen an insect in twelve weeks. Strange, when she actually remembers it.

     Twelve weeks feels like a long time, on the one hand. Not so long, on the other. Not long at all when she remembers it’ll be another two-hundred-fifty-eight weeks before she sees any of the people she loves again.

     Madi darts back from the rover with a little stick. She crouches beside Clarke and starts to dig in the dirt, turns her gap-toothed smile up and says, “Like you, Clarke.”

     A lump sticks in Clarke’s throat and she forces herself to smile back, to say, “Yeah, just like me.”

     What is she doing with this child?

 

_100 days_

     It’s not getting warmer. It’s getting colder, if anything. Clarke is freezing, huddled in the back of the rover. No more riding on top. They stay inside it now, under layers of blankets as they travel.

     They’re heading north-east, now, back towards Polis. They’d travelled far enough away, Clarke thinks. She doesn’t want to end up on the other side of the continent, with nothing and no one besides Madi. Or, even worse, doesn’t want to be on the other side of the continent and find _someone._

     Her mind goes back, always, to that first time they’d realised they weren’t alone on the ground. The shock and fear of that moment. The spear that went through Jasper’s chest. A literal spear for him, and a figurative spear for everyone else, because that was what it had felt like.

     Jasper is one of the reasons Clarke doesn’t want to go back to Arkadia. She keeps telling herself that she will; that she’ll search for things that she and Madi can use. But then the next morning she wakes up and turns the rover in a different direction.

     Madi is crouched in the front seat, under blankets and furs, looking at one of the books Clarke had taken from the island. Her tongue probes out in the gap where both of her front teeth are gone. It’s a habit that Clarke has noticed when the girl is concentrating. It won’t last, she thinks, because the teeth will grow back soon. Still, it’s cute.

     Clarke’s turned away, pulled the blanket closer and is reaching for one of the water bottles when she hears Madi gasp, “Clarke!”

     Seconds later there’s a thud and a bounce as something goes under the wheels.

     Clarke slides forward into the front of the rover, into the driver’s seat and hits the brake. She switches the engine off and says, “What?”

     “I saw something!” Madi exclaims, eyes wide with surprise. “Something ran under the rover!”

    So then of course they both have to get out and crawl underneath to look.

     There had been something. It’s dead, but when Clarke pulls the body clear and examines it, it’s pretty clear that it was an animal. Like an opossum, maybe, although Clarke’s not great at recognising Earth animals. She’s been living down here for – it must be more than a year, now, and she still can’t tell all the animals apart.

     This one has fur. “Get me a knife,” Clarke says. “I’m going to skin it.”

     “You’ll _what?_ ”

     “Take the fur,” Clarke explains. “We can make it into something. A hood for you, maybe.”

     Madi touches the top of her bare head, sceptically. “I need a hood?”

     “It will keep you warmer.” Clarke takes the knife when Madi brings it back and turns the animal over to get at its belly. The head had been smashed by the front wheel of the rover, but everything else looks intact. Clarke says, “Where did it come from, anyway?”

     “ _Raun dei_ ,” Madi says. She points.

     “Okay. When I’m done with this, we’ll go look. Get your overcoat on.”

     Madi’s overcoat is thick grey fur, taken from a body they’d found in Polis. Clarke has a similar one, but it’s in the rover. She’s a little surprised when Madi returns carrying hers as well. The girl doesn’t usually think ahead.

     “Thanks,” she says.

     “ _Pro.”_

     Clarke tosses the skin on the top of the rover when she’s done with it. It will have to be dried before she can fashion it into any kind of clothing.

     “Okay,” she says to Madi. “Show me where we’re going.”

    

     And that’s how they find the Cave Of Fucked-Up Animals, as Madi is quick to dub it. Clarke stares at the girl for so long after she says the words that Madi gets uncomfortable, starts to squirm and uses her tongue to probe the gap in her teeth and finally says, “What? Don’t you know what fucked-up means?”

     “I do,” Clarke says. “You shouldn’t say it.”

     “Why not?”

     “Because _fuck_ is a nasty word.” A pathetic attempt at parenting, Clarke thinks. She’s not even sure why it matters. It’s not as if there’s anyone else in the world who could hear them.

     “I didn’t say fuck. I said fuck- _duh._ With a _duh_ on the end.”

     And Clarke can’t be bothered to argue that. Besides, it’s true. The animals in the caves are freaky. A lot of them don’t have hair – and it turns out to be shockingly hard to recognise a furless animal. Clarke spends an embarrassingly long time staring at a weird beast with long front legs, short, squat hind legs and a lot of wrinkled skin before she realises it’s a bear. A hairless bear.

     Plenty of others are covered in lumps; fat pink lumps, or small red oozing lumps, or dozens of black lumps the size of Madi’s fist, clustering together across their body. It’s grotesque, and Clarke assumes it’s cancerous, figures they’ll be dead eventually, but for now they’re somehow okay.

     They’re not scared of humans, either. None of them pay any attention as Madi and Clarke walk by; save for the bear. Its eyes follow Madi hungrily, and Clarke puts a hand out to keep the girl closer to her. The rest of the animals ignore them the way they ignore each other.

     Clarke thinks it makes sense. They haven’t seen a human for a hundred days, if not more. They’ve forgotten, probably, if they ever knew, that humans hunt them. Or, more likely, they don’t care anymore. The animals don’t seem scared of each other. Driven into this cave by a common fear, Clarke thinks.

     And, she discovers, a common need, because further into the labyrinth of caves there’s water. A pool of it, cool and clean and sweet-tasting, when she brings her cupped hands to her mouth. It’s cold, like everything is cold, but there’s no ice in it. The pool is fed by a trickle coming down through a hole in the cave roof, over the rocky walls and into a dip in the middle of the cave. It looks shallow enough that Madi could stand up in it.

     “Let’s get some blankets,” Clarke says.

     “What for?”

     “Towels.”

     “What is it?”

     Clarke doesn’t know the right word. “We’ll dry ourselves with them.”

     “Dry after what?”

     She grins. “You’ll see.”

     They carry blankets with them into the little cave, stop by the little pool and drop them onto the rocky ground. Clarke bends down and sticks her hand into the water. It won’t be the most pleasant temperature, but it’s clean, and it’s fresh, and it’s not ice.

     “Right,” she says, straightening up. “Clothes off.”

     Madi stares at her as if she’s lost her mind. “You _koken?_ ”

     “Nope, not crazy. Just dirty. So are you.”

     “I’m not!”

     “Yeah, you are. Clothes off.”

     Reluctantly, Madi peels off her layers, one at a time. Clarke watches for a couple of minutes, to make sure, and then gets to her own layers. There are a lot of them, and they stick to each other and to Clarke’s skin, coming away reluctantly.

     Madi finishes first, stands stark naked in front of Clarke and says, “I’m cold.”

     “I bet,” Clarke says. “You’re going to be colder.” She points at the pool.

     “ _Wada klin? Yu gaf in?”_ Madi asks doubtfully.

     “Uh huh.” Clarke’s down to the last layers. She pulls off her shirt, steps out of her trousers, and hesitates in the oh-so-ancient bra that she’d brought down from the Ark a year ago, the grey undershorts that are one of only a handful she still owns. If she gets them wet then she’ll be cold and uncomfortable until they dry on her skin. But, Madi’s here.

     The little girl takes a step or two into the water, shivers dramatically when it laps up around her ankles. “ _Ai ste azen!”_

     “It’s not that bad,” Clarke says, and she makes a decision when Madi’s back is turned, tugs her last clothes off and drops them on the rocky floor and then walks forward into the water fast, before her nerve can give out.

     Holy crap, that’s cold. She crouches down in the blue, water up to her shoulders, lapping at her hair, her chin, and she gasps involuntarily with the cold of it. “ _Miya, strikon,”_ she says, grinning, holding her hands out for Madi.

     And Madi actually laughs, splashing further into the water, squealing as the cold droplets splatter across her. She grabs Clarke’s hands, reaches the middle of the pool and the water comes up to her chest as she stands there. The so-long brown braids, which she will never let Clarke touch, are trailing and floating on the surface.

     Clarke reaches for them. “ _Teik ai sis yo au.”_

     It takes a second, but Madi turns her back, sinks further into the water and surrenders to Clarke’s hands in her hair, and on the skin of her shoulders and arms and face. Gently, carefully, Clarke rubs the dirt of a hundred days off the girl’s face. Sticky trails left by tears, ash from the end of the world, soot from the rubble in Polis and dust from the road. She cleans it all off, bit by bit, fingers pushing away the dirt until a little girl’s face is revealed, peach-cream skin and cheeks rosy with cold.

     She unwinds Madi’s braids, moves to the side of the pool and uses her knife to cut out the more stubborn mats. It’s shorter, afterwards, but still dark and straight. Clarke pulls her fingers through the wet strands, untangling everything that’s left until it falls damply around Madi’s face and shoulders.

     It feels like it takes a long time. Maybe it does, Clarke isn’t sure. But she knows that at some point, Madi leans into her touch. And by the time Clarke is done, Madi’s eyes are closed.

     The girl says, “ _Mochof,”_ afterwards. Quiet. Actually grateful, Clarke thinks, and she smiles.

     “ _Pro._ ”

     Madi says, “ _Yu gou._ ”

     She tries to replicate what Clarke had done. It’s strange, feeling small fingers fluttering against Clarke’s face, pushing her hair back from her forehead and tugging on it. But it’s nice, too. And Madi is trying. That makes Clarke think that maybe, maybe she cares.

     When they’re both clean their skin is red from the cold, but Madi is smiling, showing those white baby teeth and that adorable gap, beaming at Clarke as though Clarke has hung the moon. The weak, watery sun above them begins to sink before they’re done, and as darkness fill the cave, little lights start to sprout up in the walls around them.

     Madi’s mouth drops open. “ _Chit daun bilaik?”_ she asks.

     Clarke doesn’t know the word for them in Trigedasleng, but she says, “ _Mokskwoma_ ,” and that’s probably close enough to glow-worm. Or, “ _Soncha mokskwoma,”_ she corrects herself.

     “ _Soncha mokskwoma,”_ Madi repeats, wonderingly. “Worms of light.”

     It’s beautiful, Clarke realises, tipping her head back to stare. All of this is beautiful, and there’s no one here to share it with.

     But that’s a lie. Madi is here. Madi is always here, and she might be young, and small, and a Grounder. She’s not the sort of people that Clarke is used to. Madi is not a leader, or a planner. She and Clarke don’t have any shared experiences beyond the last hundred days. They barely know each other. Madi is not one of Clarke’s people. The people she’s spent the past year of her life trying to protect – or, more, because she was trying to protect them on the Ark, too, when she got locked up. She’s always been trying to protect them, trying so hard that she lost herself along the way, and what good has it done her? Now she’s alone.

     Yet not alone.

     Clarke reaches out for Madi, grasps the girl’s chin and turns the little face towards her. In the pool of deep blue water, hidden in the caves, under the half-light made by the hundreds – thousands – of glow-worms who have somehow survived Praimfaya, Clarke looks straight at Madi.

     She says, “ _Yu laik ai kru.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't decide whether to put these at the beginning or the end. Seriously. It was a tough choice. I found it hard. Legit. Then I said... Por que no los dos? (Wait I think that reference is for Australians only sorry guys)
> 
> So, I decided to write this after watching the finale (obviously) because Madi kind of... didn't click for me. I get the feeling she's going to be a big part of Season 5, and on paper I love the idea of this relationship formed between the only two people left, this sort of mother-daughter-through-availability thing, but when I saw it I wasn't super keen. I think what got me was that Madi was too old, (teenage girls are not always the easiest people to instantly bond with) and that she and Clarke seeemed too distant. But, it was a short scene, and a new character/actor, and I wanted to give it a chance instead of going into Season 5 already feeling iffy about it.  
> I don't know much about teenage girls. I mean, I was one... if you want to be technical I suppose I still am, but I'm a legal adult yo. But I didn't spend much time in high school for a number of reasons, and my teenage girl friends were weird and confusing. I am, however, a super intense babysitter. Man do I babysit hard. Bonding with a little girl? I totally get that. I do it all the time. I've got kids who I've been looking after for half their lives, kids who I've picked up on their first day of kindergarten, watched lose their first tooth, talked through the first time they wiped their own bum - good times. 
> 
> I decided to go back to the beginning, write Clarke bonding with a little girl as something that I can understand and empathise with, and hope that it gave me a different perspective on their relationship in the present. And I hope it does that for you guys too!
> 
> Thanks for reading/leaving kudos/commenting/whatever. Anyone who leaves kudos and comments is my favourite, and they have the most stunning eyes. Just look at those gorgeous orbs of sight. Wow.


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